Breaking Lose
by Kaz Gemcity
Summary: "A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. "   Albert Camus
1. Prologue

Neal Caffery handed Peter a cup of coffee as soon as he walked in the door.

"Peter, please tell me you have a case." He begged as his boss/firend took a sip of the coffee and grimanced.

"This coffee is cold." Peter complained and placed it on Jones desk as he walked by toward his office.

"It was warm when I made it at nine." Neal commented, closing the door behind him and handing today's paper to Peter.

"When you stole a painting..." Neal raised his eye brows at Peter.

"When I allegedly stole a painting." He corrected,

"Fine, allegedly. Whatever. The point is, if you had to steal a painting from a high security bank vault, in the middle of the day, how would you do it?" He asked.

"Didn't we already do this? I went through the basement, up the elevator, faked a visitor's pass, and lifted the guard's keycard." Neal answered.

"No, that was money. This is a painting." Peter pointed out. Neal rolled his eyes.

"What's the difference? I would do the same thing, just with a bigger briefcase."

"Would you ever leave a calling card?" Peter asked.

"If it fit the situation. Why?" Neal was getting more curious by the minute.

"What would it say?" Peter demanded, his voice tight.

"It depends. Why?" Neal asked again.

"We've got a problem." Peter winced.

"Would you please explain to me what is going on!" Neal exclaimed.

"A card was sent to a local bank this morning. By ten past twelve two Vermeers were missing from their vault." Peter explained.

"What does this have to do with me?" He asked.

"The card said, 'Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The clock is ticking. What time will the alarm go off? With love, The Forger.'" Peter read from a card in a small plastic bag.

"I still don't get what it has to do with me." Neal said.

"What did you call yourself in France, Neal?" Peter persisted.

"The..." Neal trailed off.

"They don't really think it was me, do they Peter?" Neal sounded genuinlly worried.

"Look at the script on the card Neal. The signature. The name. It all screams Neal." Peter exclaimed.

"You don't think I did it, do you? Check my anklet."

"I don't know what to think, Neal. Your tracker was off. You were off grid. Black. What I think doesn't really matter anymore, Neal." Peter nodded to the long line of men in black coming out of the elevator and through the glass doors.

"I'm not going back to jail, Peter. I just got out." Neal begged.

"You don't have a choice." Peter said as Neal was taken into custody and dragged on his heals from the FBI building.


	2. Chapter 1

_Two Days Earlier_

"Please, Peter?" I begged, not expecting him to give, but asking all the same.

"It's not going to happen, Neal." He promised me, walking toward the elevator to leave for the night.

"But it's the most prestegiouse summer wine tasting in New York." I complained.

"You have wine at June's." Peter pointed out, jabbing his finger at the button to bring the elevator up to the twenty-first floor. The yellow numbers above the door slowly went up from nine, to ten, to eleven, where the paused for a moment and resumed their trek.

"You can come with me." I smiled, and put on my hat.

"Elizabeth and I already have plans." He smiled, ducking his head a little bit, in the way he always did when talking about El. We both looked up sharply as the elevator door opened. Peter looked at me.

"What is he doing here?" He demanded, looking sceptiacly at Mozzie.

"No time for that, Suit." Moz said, stepping out of the elevator and pulling me away from Peter and toward Jones's desk. Peter watched us, not even blinking when the elevator door closed and began it's descent.

"What's up, Moz?" I asked, worried, picturing fires and dead bodies.

"Nothing we can't handle, Neal." He said, looking around him.

"Then why are you here?" I asked. Mozzie looked up at me.

"I thought you wanted to go to that wine tasting." He covertly slipped a small drive into Jones's computer. My eyes quickly flashed to his hand and then back to his eyes. He inclined his head, and blinked his eyes slowly, telling me to play along.

"It's out of my range. I can't go." I said, leaning against Diana's desk.

"Shame." Mozzie shrugged.

"I know. I really wanted to go." I tried to read between the lines of what Moz was telling me. I wasn't getting much.

"You got mail today, Neal." He emphasized the word _mail_. I felt my hands clench into fists. So it was time then. Mos pulled the drive out of the computer and placed it into his pocket. If you weren't watching for it, you would not have seen it. We walked together back to Peter.

"Is there something I can do for him?" He asked me, not talking to 'my little friend' out of habit.

"He just came to say hi." I said, nodding to Mozzie.

"Bye, Neal." He walked toward the stairs backward.

"Suit." He nodded to Peter.

"Say hi to Mrs. Suit for me." He added, almost as an after thought, disappearing behind the heavy metal door. Peter and I stepped onto the elevator that had reappeared. I leaned against the back wall and closed my eyes.

"You okay, Neal." Peter asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. My eyes snapped open.

"Fine." I smiled, though nothing was fine. In fact all hell was about to break lose.


	3. Chapter 2

I rushed to June's as quickly as I could, but New York traffic is brutal, and cabs were spares. Moz was already waiting for me when I finally walked through the door, my face drawn and my lips pressed together. Seeing the look on my face, he passed me a pre-poured glass of wine. I took it and nodded my thanks, before sitting down at the table and looking at the sheets of paper he had scattered across the smooth wood.

"That's everything we got today from the computer." He said, confirming what I already knew.

"The rest of the file is behind that bookcase." I said, pointing my finger in the general direction, without looking up from the folder I had my nose buried in.

"I know where it is." I heard Moz, mutter under his breath. He grunted a little as he forced the third shelf to slide down and the fourth to slide up, revealing a slice of pale painted wall. He placed his hand against the hidden palm reader and then watched the wall part for him. Grunting again he pulled out three plain brown boxes.

I stood up to help Mozzie move the boxes to the table. As we set them down, I began to pull out every light blue folder I within my reach. I placed them down carelessly.

"This what you're looking for?" Moz asked, holding up the small white envelope.

"That was supposed to be in this box." I said. He smiled and shrugged.

"I didn't want you to use it before it was time." He informed me.

"Uh huh. You sure it didn't have something to do with you and Jenny and a shipment of tiles from Egypt?" I asked knowingly.

"The bills don't pay themselves." He answered.

"You don't have bills. I'm pretty sure that you don't even have an official name with our government. If you do, Peter hasn't found it yet." Moz remained silent and handed me what I was looking for. I pulled out the small, black key, and put the envelope in my pocket.

"Time to get this party started." Mozzie muttered, as I unclipped my anklet. He handed me a black tote bag.

"To the bank." I smirked, and walked out of June's, Moz right behind me. I loved prep work, and it was nice to be back in the game.


	4. Chapter 3

**_A/N- I have nothing more to say in the A/N. That's odd. Usually I can go on for a good couple on minutes (typing time) on something completely unrelated. Oh well. Go to this website if you like musicals_**

**_dailymusicalquotes(dot)blogspot(dot)com_**

**_And go to this one if you watch Burn Notice_**

**_twitter(dot)com - Search "Michael_Westen3"_**

**_Love you alls._**

The most stressful part of any given robbery is the prep work. When you're actually doing the job there is an adrenaline high and everything just seems to fall in place.

So it was nice to have all of that behind me.

The bank was closed this late at night, it was almost one in the morning. Before I walked in, Mozzie stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. He looked into my eyes and then nodded.

"Good luck. And have fun." He said, walking to the cafe next door to wait. I grinned and pushed open the doors to the bank. I had had the security disabled already. No alarm went off.

Without pause, I strode to the back vault. There were two Vermeer's here today. They would only be here for forty-eight hours, so now was the perfect time to strike.

I pulled on latex gloves and grabbed the paintings. Keeping them in their protective cases, I pulled two similarly wrapped forgeries from my black tote. I quickly swapped the paintings.

They wouldn't notice anything. Tomorrow I would send in a decoy to take the forgeries. No one would be wiser. It was the perfect plan.


End file.
